Artemis Fowl and the Codex Crystal
by SilverRavenStar
Summary: Rating may change. After he's been mindwiped by the fairies, what will Artemis do with his life? What new schemes will he make? And in the LEP, an elf reflects on what life was when Artemis was around. Some Artemis and Holly in later chapters. Please RR.
1. Prologue

Excerpt from Artemis Fowl's diary, disk 1 (encrypted)  
  
I do not think that I am the sort of person to enjoy vacations. In fact, I can name several other pursuits I would rather be dedicating time to. However, Mother insists, as we are a family again, that we must spend time together as appropriate.  
  
With Father home, my criminal escapades have to be designed much more carefully, and I must say that I will relish the challenge. He thinks that I should let go, but I have a crime spree of epic proportions planned that I will not abandon now. The Fowls have been out of the spotlight for too long, if you catch this delicious irony.  
  
The success of my plan rests on several important factors; the least of which that Butler agrees to help me. For some reason - perhaps the fact that he mysteriously grew old and as such has slowed down - he does not seem entirely so interested in my crimes these days, and Juliet of course is in America as the 'Jade Princess.' However, the Fowls and the Butlers have always worked most closely together, and I feel confident that I will persuade one or the other to help. After all, what is a Fowl without his Butler?  
  
Returning to the vacation, Mother decided that it would be beneficial to the health of the family, especially my father, to spend a week in the south of France. My father has been released from the hospital after the extended tenure he spent there to recover from wounds inflicted on a delivery of bullion gold to a crime camp in Russia. Unfortunately, the negotiations went bad and my father was kept as a captive for several months.  
  
He was recently released and therefore that triggered a new sort of desire in my mother; the need to spend 'family time' together, whilst meanwhile trying to dissuade me from my criminal enterprises.  
  
Of course this is a fruitless venture. Through my technology, I have discovered the ultimate theft I wish to pull off. There is something called the Codex Crystal stored in the American museum called the Smithsonian. It has properties that most humans could only dream of, or at least according to the limited information I obtained from the Internet. I somewhat doubt the veracity of many of the Internet's claims, but all the sources - well, enlightened sources, that is - agree on one thing:  
  
It is powerful.  
  
With the Codex Crystal in my grasp, the Fowls could be great. No longer am I content with the Fowls merely being one of the top five richest families in Ireland; I want them to be the wealthiest, and also the most influential.  
  
It will not be long now until this new crime spree begins.  
  
Then I will be unstoppable.  
  
Artemis Fowl was sitting in a beach in one of the glorious resorts of France, while he typed intently on his laptop. His mother, smeared with a positively insane amount of tanning lotion, was stretched out nearby, and his father was sipping from an iced pina colada martini.  
  
No half-rate junky tourist beach for the Fowls. No sir. The beach that the three Fowls were currently inhabiting had sand so white it seemed to have been bleached, sparkling blue waters, and pristine scenery all around. Their fellow beach-goers were the sort who could buy a Mercedes with their pocket change and often crashed at the Prime Minister's house.  
  
Artemis was sitting beneath a wide umbrella to protect his pale skin from the sun. Although his mother found it desirable to look as well-done as a roasted chicken, her son did not. Pushing his Christian Dior shades higher on his nose, Artemis stared around, as if expecting one of his Mercedes- buying fellows to suddenly rush up and confide all secrets of the Codex Crystal.  
  
Angeline Fowl stirred. Seeing as she had been motionless on the beach for the past three hours, Artemis found this surprising. "Oh, Arty, you ought to go swimming," she cooed lazily. "The water's so nice. Most boys would like to go swimming, and you have been writing on that computer for most of the day."  
  
Artemis pushed his Christian Dior shades low enough so that he could survey his mother over the tops of them. "Mother, I can assure you that if I wanted to swim, I would have done so several hours earlier."  
  
"Come on, Arty!" Artemis Fowl Sr. enthused. "It's been so long since we went swimming together - you were probably just a little boy. Come on, what do you say?"  
  
Artemis could not refuse a request such as that. With a sigh, he set the laptop in its black briefcase, took off the shades, and crossed the sparkling white sand as daintily as if the beach was made of pieces of glass. Artemis Fowl Sr. was not nearly as delicate; he charged across and splashed into the water.  
  
Reaching the shoreline, Artemis cautiously dipped a toe in. The water was pleasantly cool, he noted, and it was indeed a stifling day. A heat haze shimmered on the horizon.  
  
"Come in, Arty, it's wonderful!"  
  
Artemis had no more excuses. He waded in. 


	2. Chapter 1: Active Duty

The incessant blaring of her alarm clock woke Senior Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon fairy police. She groaned and slapped over at it, which only made the heat-sensor clock blare louder and more insistently. "Drat Foaly," Holly muttered between her teeth. As there had been a sudden spate of LEP officers not reporting for work on time, the centaur had designed a clock that went off precisely on time, and refused to shut up until the user had gotten out of bed. If said user, however, was not out of bed in thirty seconds, infrared sensors in the bed delivered a shock enough to send them literally flying out of it. After finding this out the hard way, Holly always made sure to get up immediately.  
  
She tumbled out of bed, pulled on her LEP suit, and fumbled about for her Neutrino 2000. As she had been cleaning it last night, she wasn't quite sure where it was until her hand found the barrel of it.  
  
"Good," Holly muttered, putting the gun in its holster. She attached various other gizmos to herself and suit. "Check, check, check. Now let's blow this party. Root'll blow a few more gaskets if I'm even the smallest second late for work. He'll probably name me assistant boot-cleaner or something."  
  
Holly stepped out into Lower Haven and was immediately overwhelmed by a rushing, jostling crowd of fairies. Several harassed-looking executives ran past, talking urgently into their cell phones, gnomes wandered about looking confused, and dwarves tried to eat everything in their way. Life as usual.  
  
"Come on - get out of my way - " Holly jabbed a gnome in the expansive rear with her buzz baton to get the smelly fairy going. It gave her an injured look and waddled off to obstruct someone else's morning.  
  
As she battled through the usual crowd of frenzied fairies, Holly felt someone tap her on the shoulder. Thinking that she would demote them to assistant boot-cleaner if they caused her to be late for work, she turned. It was Grub Kelp.  
  
"D'Arvit, Grub, I'm going to be late!" Holly exploded.  
  
Grub looked wounded. "You're supposed to help junior officers, Captain. And I was wondering if I could - "  
  
Holly wagged a finger at him. "It's Senior Captain now, Grub. Kindly don't forget that."  
  
"No, Senior Captain. And I was thinking that the new alarm-clock system is extremely unfair, I wasn't the one who was coming late to work, I think that Foaly should only give it to the slackers - "  
  
"File a complaint!" Holly yelled over her shoulder at him as she dove back into the crowd. As she shoved her way toward LEP headquarters, she regretted saying that. If complaints were money, Grub would be the richest fairy in Haven, and the fairy government had all but publicly announced that if Grub filed one more complaint, they were going to retire and spend their days vacationing in the luxury spas of Atlantis.  
  
LEP headquarters came into sight and Holly knocked aside a young elf who was gabbling merrily into her cell phone about the newest CD from the boy- band F. Airy Boyz. Not exactly the most original name in the world.  
  
She made her way up to the door. The print scanner winked insolently at her. Holly pressed her finger against the scanner and said, "Open the heck up now or I'll blast you."  
  
"Identity not confirmed," said the cool mechanical voice from a loudspeaker. "Name and voice match needed."  
  
Holly ground her teeth. "Foaly, this is Holly Short. Open this door up right now or I'll demonstrate to you how good your own technology is."  
  
"I don't need a demonstration, but thanks for the offer," said Foaly's smug voice through the loudspeaker. "Always a pleasure to know that Holly Short wants to help out. All right, sweetheart, door opening."  
  
Holly stormed through and into headquarters. Julius Root was waiting for her, chewing on a trademark fungus cigar. She was surprised and worried to see that he didn't look angry. That wasn't something that happened every day. She considered telling him about Grub, to see if things would get back to normal.  
  
"Assignment?" Holly said. "Any more rogue trolls on the loose?"  
  
That was the trick. It was amazing what could set Root off.  
  
"DO YOU THINK THAT IF THERE WAS A ROGUE TROLL I WOULD BE SITTING HERE EXCHANGING HELLOS AND GREETINGS?" Root bellowed. "HAVE I NOT SPENT MY ENTIRE LIFE WITH THE LEP? DO I NOT KNOW PROCEDURE DOWN TO THE LAST FLECK OF SPIT ON THE PAGE?"  
  
Holly didn't mention that the spit was probably Root's.  
  
She said, "Agreed, Commander. What I meant was, is there an assignment that a Recon officer would need to handle?"  
  
"I'm getting there," Root growled, chomping vigorously on his cigar. It probably looked like hamburger by now. "Holly, I'm sure you're aware of procedure when it comes to mind-wipe victims."  
  
"Yeah," Holly said. "Hook on the electrodes, pick the wipe, and they go out."  
  
Root rolled his eyes, but miraculously didn't explode again. Instead he said, "I meant after the mind-wipe was finished and they were released from LEP supervision. What happens then?"  
  
A nasty feeling flooded Holly's stomach. Suddenly she knew what this was about. "Commander," she began hastily. "Couldn't you send someone else, I mean - "  
  
Root glared at her. "You were just asking for a mission. Now you've got one. Yep, you get to check on the Fowl boy. Everyone else in Recon has; now it's your turn. Make absolutely sure that there is nothing nearby that could trigger so much as the memory of a dwarf's behind. He's planning more crimes; he's dangerous. He cannot get the People cannot get involved in this. This is important."  
  
"Look, if he wanted memories of a dwarf's behind, he could just look at Butler's face," Holly pointed out.  
  
Root pointed her to the equipment room. "Get going, my girl. You can take a Hummingbird if it suits you. And remember, detailed report. Previous patrols have noted he's interested in the - " He paused for dramatic effect - "Codex Crystal."  
  
That got Holly's attention immediately. She gulped. Root was right; this was extremely important. Trust a Mud Boy as devious as Artemis to find the Codex Crystal and realize what it was. The People had been unable to make sure that the Crystal would ever be safe in fairy hands, so they had actually done such a thing as give it to the Mud Men. Surreptitiously, of course. The Mud Men had dug it up in some jewel mine and immediately sent it to their Smithsonian Museum, where it was known as the Hope Diamond.  
  
It was a boring name, in Holly's opinion, but then it was better than the alternative. If the Mud Men actually realized what it was - well, to make things simple, Grub would no longer be filing any complaints. It was a huge risk, but the People knew what it was, and they would actively use it. That was why it was safer in Mud Men hands. The fortunate thing was that the Mud Men had it locked in a case with plenty of security, and if anyone ever even managed to deactivate the alarms, someone would know.  
  
Holly checked out a pair of Hummingbird wings, then headed off to the deployment chute. Several important government officials were arriving in Haven today, so the chute was actually being cleaned. This was a momentous event in Haven history. There were Spud's Spud Emporium burger wrappers, candy wrappers, disposed disposable cameras, spent power cartridges, and everything else you could imagine scattered across the place.  
  
There were two gnomes cleaning the shuttleport when Holly arrived. She flashed her badge at them, and in return, they gave her grunts in unison. Holly escaped through and walked up to the smallest, most maneuverable LEP shuttle there was.  
  
"All right if I take this baby out for a fly, gentlemen?" she called over.  
  
The gnomes didn't answer. They were too busy arguing over whether or not Mud Men had as large rears as they did. Holly took this for a yes.  
  
Swinging herself into the cockpit, she depressed buttons and pulled several levers. The LEP shuttle sputtered to life. Holly checked the gauge, swung the nose of the shuttle around, and edged out into the main chute. She checked her three-dimensional flare monitor. Big one coming.  
  
Holly turned on her helmet mic.  
  
"Foaly. This is Senior Captain Short. I'm deploying for the surface on routine mind-wipe checkup mission for subject AF-1. Flare coming. Commencing takeoff. Over."  
  
"Roger," Foaly said. "All righty, flare coming. Hold."  
  
Holly waited, palms sweaty against the controls, as the flare boiled up from the depths of the earth. The instant it had passed, re-frying the lumps of charcoal on the sides of the tunnel, she nosed the shuttle out into the chute.  
  
"In chute now, Foaly."  
  
"All right, I see you," Foaly crackled back. "Got you on the radar screen - flare receding. Hold onto your g's. Take off right about....now!"  
  
Holly shot out and swung upward, gunning the throttle. The distant roar behind her told her she didn't have much time.  
  
However, Holly was a professional for a good reason. As the flare built behind her, gathering strength, she eased the throttle forward and hit the gas. Pulling a lever, she streamlined the wings, and the shuttle rose like a streak through the wide chute.  
  
Just as the top edges of the flare started nipping at the underside of her craft - Holly dared a quick look at the flare monitor - she expertly shot the shuttle out of the lip of the shaft. Holly rose into the air, just as the flare hit full-force behind her. Breathing hard with the adrenaline, Holly swung the shuttle down and into the port at Tara.  
  
She climbed out and stretched cautiously, then pulled off her helmet to take in the fresh air. Massaging her ears to make sure that the tips didn't start to flake, she said into the voice pickup on her microphone, "Foaly. This is Senior Captain Short. Reached Tara. Repeat, reached Tara. Over."  
  
"Good," Foaly's voice crackled in her ear. "All right, sweetheart, you can't take the shuttle any farther. Put on those Hummingbirds and get going."  
  
Holly rolled her eyes and didn't mention the fact that she was going to cut off the fairies' carrot budget if Foaly called her sweetheart one more time. That would fix him.  
  
Holly strapped the wings on her back and shielded. Immediately, she disappeared from the visible spectrum and all that was left of her was a slight heat haze on the horizon.  
  
She shot through the air, thirty thousand feet above the ground. The sensors in her helmet constantly adjusted to take in data. The outlines of various Mud Men buildings scrolled in glowing green lines across the data feed in Holly's headset. She'd put a red lock on Fowl Manor, so when Artemis's mansion appeared, she'd know immediately. Although Foaly had removed the surveillance, it was still considered a 'hot spot' for LEP activity. The People were taking no chances with residual memory triggers.  
  
However, Holly knew that Artemis wasn't going to be in his home. He'd gone on vacation in the south of France, so she reprogrammed the feeds to set a red lock on young Master Fowl himself.  
  
Artemis. Holly's stomach did a strange flip-flop at the thought of him. How was she going to react to seeing the Mud Boy again? At the end of their last adventure together - the one involving the C Cube, the supercomputer that Artemis had constructed from stolen fairy technology - she'd found herself genuinely saddened by the thought of saying good-bye to him when it came time to wipe his memories of the People. They'd developed a respect for each other- maybe even a liking - during their adventures. Life just wasn't the same without Artemis Fowl and his nefarious schemes around.  
  
It's better this way, Holly told herself firmly. The People won't be in danger from him and he won't involve us in his little crime sprees anymore. Besides, he himself agreed to the mind-wipe.  
  
Comforted by the thought that she wasn't supposed to interact with him - only monitor him - Holly switched the data provider from buildings to humans. And besides, it was time to stop thinking. She'd arrived in France.  
  
She swooped a bit lower, setting her helmet camera on high resolution to monitor the countless beaches around. Why was it that Mud Men needed so many places to cook themselves in radiation, build castles, and eat a large amount of entirely unhealthy foods? Holly couldn't understand.  
  
Holly sent the Hummingbird into a gentle decline. More green outlines of Mud Men scrolled across the feed. The usual. Holly was just starting to wonder if Artemis was even in France when something on the corner of the screen caught her eye. A thick red line was flashing insistently around a certain form. She'd found him.  
  
Holly cut the power to her wings and drifted nearer, silent. Hanging about twelve feet above the ocean, she watched as Artemis Fowl Sr. chugged enthusiastically into the blue, sparkling water.  
  
And behind him was - Artemis. He was unchanged. Slender, pale as a vampire, with black hair, blue eyes, and that waspish smile that made you think he vanted to suck your blood. Although, Holly noticed, he had grown up a bit. He was around fifteen, in Mud Men years. She was suddenly very, very glad that she was invisible.  
  
Holly projected a Secrecy Shield around herself. The shield closed her in a complete bubble of silence, so she could make a communication without the Mud Men hearing her.  
  
"Foaly. Senior Captain Short, reporting in from France. Target AF-1 spotted."  
  
"Excellent," Foaly replied. "Status?"  
  
"Standing at the edge of the seashore - wait, he's wading in."  
  
She could almost hear Foaly rolling his eyes. "I meant, general mood? Temperament? Get that recorded, sweetheart, and then we're going to copy data from that laptop. Do a scan for any other fairy-related paraphernalia in the area. Can't take any chances with this one."  
  
Holly pressed a button on her wrist control and a far-ranging scanner on her helmet swept the surrounding ten-mile radius. No abnormal blips popped up on her screen.  
  
"All clear."  
  
"All right. Move closer, if you can, and get your data-chip out. Remember, heat hazes don't shoot around like hyperactive mosquitoes, so take your time. I'll wait."  
  
Holly edged over Artemis Sr.'s head and drifted gently, oh so gently, toward the laptop, sitting abandoned on the beach next to a dozing Mrs. Fowl.  
  
Holly fished in her pocket and pulled out a silver device that looked like a Mud Man cell phone. She pressed a few buttons on the panel, and the machine gave a soft whirring noise.  
  
"Data copier prepared."  
  
There was a rush of static, then Foaly's voice. " - Dratted pixies tripping over every single piece of equipment I have - oh, Holly. Right. Extend the antenna feed and plug it into the main port. There you go. Hold on - I'm setting up a link in the main terminal down here."  
  
Holly waited tensely. She dared to shoot a glance over at Artemis. He seemed to have wearied of his swim and looked like he was about to come back to shore. She wished Foaly would hurry up. She heard a loud chomp.  
  
"Foaly, would you mind concentrating? I might have been mistaken, but I thought that was what you're paid to do. Carrots will wait, you overgrown monkey. Our Mud Boy's heading back."  
  
Holly heard Foaly mumble a curse. "Shorry," he said, gulping down the carrot. There was a loud electronic bleep in Holly's ear, and she winced.  
  
"All righty, link established - begin data copy."  
  
Holly quickly pressed a few buttons and data started transferring up the fiber-optic cable concealed in the antenna. She waited tensely. Artemis was at the edge of the water now, looking straight at her, although of course he couldn't see her. He stepped onto the sand.  
  
"Foaly, hurry it up!" Holly pleaded.  
  
"Hold onto your pointy ears, sweetheart, I got everything under control." Foaly sounded perfectly unconcerned. In the background, Holly heard his computer whirring. Artemis was coming closer. He was not ten feet away.  
  
A few clicks over the microphone. Holly checked the progress screen; the small device had almost finished copying every single byte of data on Artemis's laptop. Good thing, too, because Artemis was five feet away. He was almost there...  
  
The light that signified the end of transfer blinked.  
  
In a rush of adrenaline, Holly pulled the antenna loose, backed up, and jacked the Hummingbirds to full power. She didn't even care that shielded fairies were supposed to use extra caution around Mud Men. She couldn't stand being so near Artemis.  
  
"Bit in a hurry there?" Foaly still sounded unconcerned. "All right, the locator on your data device is sending every drop of Fowl's hard-drive down here." The centaur now sounded gleeful. "Ooh, I can read Fowl's diary now. Today...I made...more...trouble...Wonder what he's saying..." There were a few more clicks in Holly's ear, and another sonic squawk.  
  
"Foaly, do you mind moving the microphone pickup, unless you plan to deafen me? These are high-frequency devices."  
  
"Whoops, yeah, my mistake. Thought it was the transformer."  
  
As Holly, with relief, put a good deal of distance between herself and Artemis, she couldn't resist one look back. Artemis was holding his computer on his lap, but he wasn't typing, and was staring at the air disconcertingly near where she was with a thoughtful expression on his face.  
  
Just for a second, something hovered at the very edges of Artemis Fowl's brain. Something that he thought he had known before and lost, like a dream forgotten just after you wake up. The heat haze still shimmered vaguely on the horizon, but he closed his eyes for a second and it was gone.  
  
Holly couldn't hold back a huge sigh of relief. Mission accomplished.  
  
"Foaly, I'm heading back to Tara Shuttleport."  
  
"Excellent. Contact me when you get there, unless you have a problem with flying trolls or something. Don't bother me, I'll be busy down here breaking all of Fowl's highly complicated encryptions." The centaur sounded positively arrogant.  
  
Holly rolled her eyes and switched the microphone off.  
  
She peeled away and headed for land. Holly threw full power to the Hummingbirds and cleared a small inlet. Since she still had the Secrecy Shield on, she was little more than a bobbing shimmer on the fresh breeze, the slight noise of her wings masked.  
  
As she banked steeply and climbed, Holly allowed a smile to creep across her lips. Finished with Fowl; she wouldn't have to deal with him for another five years or so. She'd copied his data. Foaly could analyze it.  
  
At that moment, the control lights on Holly's wrist panel, which were always green, started to blink red. Holly stared at it, until the red alerts began to flash up on her data feed. Her equipment was failing!  
  
The Hummingbirds were starting to slow down. Desperate, Holly diverted power from all of her other hardware and threw it to the wings - or tried. The buttons seemed to be stuck. She pummeled the transfer button frantically - and nothing happened.  
  
She was going into a steep dive. Holly flicked switches and hit buttons - with no success.  
  
She was heading down, fast.  
  
Everything was failing. Holly would have thrown her equipment free, but that was severely against regulations. A Mud Man could find it. She tried to activate her emergency crash padding, but that too had failed. She tumbled head-over-heels through several miles of empty sky, the useless Hummingbirds silent on her back.  
  
To her credit, Holly managed to keep a clear head. She curled into the crash position, secured all equipment as best she could, and prepared for the impact. The ground was growing steadily bigger below.  
  
She was going to hit. Holly screwed up her eyes. She came down and slammed into the ground. Stars danced like flecks in front of her eyes. Her own speed sent her skidding across the earth. She hit something hard and completely lost consciousness. 


	3. Chapter 2: Broken Out

Mulch Diggums considered himself a fortunate dwarf. He was a kleptomaniac who so far had managed to evade prison no less than twenty-six times. This sounded like he was some sort of great escape artist until you put it next to the number of times he'd been in prison, which was one hundred and fifty five. Mulch was expert at evading LEP officers (well, most of the time), and he was a friend of the great Artemis Fowl. As most of the younger fairies knew nothing about Artemis Fowl except that he was a stink worm in Holly's hair, Mulch was able to get a lot of mileage out of the stories he told. Most of the younger fairies considered him a sort of hero, a misconception that Mulch himself did nothing to diffuse. Pretty soon they'd be putting up posters of him and practicing Mulchism. All Haven had better look out.  
  
And Artemis had even changed Mulch's arrest warrant to throw the LEP off the track for a while. Mulch knew, however, that a changed arrest warrant wasn't going to deter Senior Captain Holly Short if she caught up with him. So he had to be careful about who he bragged to about Artemis Fowl and the great escape. He'd once made the mistake of telling an undercover LEP operative exactly how he had chewed through the base of main operations and stolen the glowcrystal that powered Foaly's main equipment. That little slip had earned him a hundred years in the clank.  
  
However, Mulch hadn't escaped scot-free. Artemis couldn't entirely erase all the crimes against him. Mulch had been taken straight to Police Plaza and booked into a high-security cell for twenty years, to be precise. He'd only served two so far. Artemis's altered warrant had him set to be released in five years.  
  
Right now Mulch was sitting in a high-security ward in Howler's Peak. Wonderful place, especially when you considered that his cellmate was a crazy goblin who thought that he owned the world. He was often jabbering away about how he planned to rule it. Mulch thought he should attend elementary school first.  
  
"And den, I make da LEP cook dinnah!" the goblin finished enthusiastically. He had just launched into a long and exceedingly dumb rant about how he was going to eat all the food in the world and restore the B'wa Kell to full glory by making sure all its members had eyeball tattoos.  
  
"Swell," Mulch muttered. He looked around the ward for the fiftieth time, trying to discover if there were any bare spots on the wall that could lead to dirt that he could chew through. He had looked a thousand times. This was Howler's Peak, where far more dangerous creatures than this crazy goblin were kept. The walls were solid rock and crisscrossed with laser bars. He'd be turned into dwarf roast if he attempted to penetrate. Besides, stone was murder on his digestion. Impossible to chew. For obvious reasons.  
  
"I should buy a tattoo fairy," the goblin said. His hands were in vacuum cuffs, so he couldn't conjure fireballs. For once Mulch would have appreciated it. Maybe the goblin could help get him out of here. He wasn't cut out for prison, he decided. The LEP was not fair.  
  
"Want eyeball tattoos?" the goblin kindly offered.  
  
"No," Mulch said. It was a stupid question. Then again, the day goblins said something intelligent was the day Julius Root took an anger management class. Mulch sat in his manacled chair and pouted. He wished Artemis had set the warrant down lower, so he could be off and pilfering, but Artemis had put it as low as he could without arousing too much suspicion.  
  
Mulch sat feeling sorry for himself for a long time, ignoring the fact that the goblin had launched into a new rant. He examined a cuff of his prison uniform. It was gray, and ugly, and itched. Embroidery marched across his chest; it read "5271" in large black letters. At first Mulch had thought that that was his IQ, and had been very pleased with himself, but later had found out that it was his prison number, and had been quite disappointed.  
  
The goblin had just opened his mouth to speak when the rock wall started to shudder. Mulch stared at it, intrigued, wondering if one of his dwarven fellows had just expelled a record-setting amount of gas. That was the only thing he could think of that would make the prison shake. It was made of steel, layers of wire and plate, and of course a fair amount of fairy magic, which was reinforced every day by special LEP squadrons.  
  
Then the wall started to crumble.  
  
Mulch's interest turned to fear. He was sure that this hadn't been in the itinerary. The goblin actually stopped talking. As he was a reject from the psycho ward, this was sort of surprising.  
  
Mulch was in shock. Howler's Peak was coming down. This was top-security. Something was wrong. And yet, he felt a little wriggle of joy. He was going to be free.  
  
Well, he was going to be free one way or another, especially if he didn't get his chains undone. Mulch watched as the wall crumbled inward toward him, mustered all the gas he possibly could, and let loose.  
  
It was barely anything, Mulch thought regretfully, because the prison food was so bad, but it was enough. The cuffs were wrenched loose and he scuttled free. The wall continued to collapse. If he'd produced a better bang, Mulch thought, he would have blown it back.  
  
As the rubble started to crash into the room, Mulch jumped up and scrambled to the top of it as it kept on falling. He covered his head and wished that he was safe in his tunnels.  
  
At last, the rumbling stopped, and Mulch looked up. Much to his relief, he wasn't wearing little wings and a halo. In fact, he was crouched on the crumbled remnants of the wall of his cell.  
  
Below him was a narrow metal path that led to a thick wall of wire. Mulch skidded down the rubble and onto the path below. He could look out and see Haven, spreading below him. He jumped in the air, and his toes wiggled in joy.  
  
He was free.  
  
Only then did Mulch realize what that meant.  
  
The Lower Elements, Haven  
  
"Foaly!" Root bellowed into the microphone. "D'Arvit, you stupid centaur, where are you? What's happening? What's going on? What's happening?"  
  
A dull hissing answered him.  
  
"D'ARVIT!" Root roared. "What's going on? Why is everything malfunctioning? Foaly, by Haven, if we've been pinged again, your entire salary and your job is going down the tubes!"  
  
"Nice to see Commander Root cares about me," said a smug voice behind him. Root whirled, and saw Foaly step out of the shadows, crunching on a carrot, apparently unperturbed. Root thrust a finger at the bank of controls, their lights all blinking red.  
  
"Tell me how you explain that," Root said. "Talk fast, you eating machine."  
  
Foaly scratched his hairy belly, looking wounded. "That's cruel, Julius. That's really cruel." He clopped over to the monitors and began pressing various keys. All this achieved was to produce a loud, long sonic squawk. Foaly winced and turned down a set of speakers.  
  
"Don't - call - me - Julius!" Root said, turning a brilliant shade of magenta.  
  
Foaly clicked a few keys and then frowned. "Scopes are dead. It looks like the internal wiring's been cut, but no one can do that. We've got the best security system in the Lower Elements on my equipment."  
  
"Then why is everything dead?" Root shouted.  
  
"Hold your horses, Root, I'm figuring it out," Foaly said, giving a snort at his own joke. Root turned the exact tint of beet juice. Foaly pressed several more keys and brought a microphone to his mouth. "Holly? Senior Captain Short? Senior Captain Short? Do you copy? This is Foaly. Senior Captain Short, do you copy?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"Whatever's going on, Holly's not answering," Foaly said, slamming down the microphone.  
  
Root's jaw worked. He was quite apparently furious.  
  
"SO YOU HAVE PUT ONE OF MY CAPTAINS IN DANGER, YOU PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A FAIRY?" he shouted.  
  
"I didn't put her in danger," Foaly said. "I am not responsible for this breakdown." He flicked a few more switches, and when nothing happened, whacked the console with his fist. This achieved nothing except to spill a cup of water, which had been left on the bank, all over him. Foaly assumed an expression of wounded dignity as he sponged himself off.  
  
Root ground his teeth together very, very tightly. "Explain. Right. Now," he said. "I mean it. If you do not tell me what is going on, you will never see another piece of equipment in your life. I'll commit you to Madame Loasapart's Center For Terminally Insane Fairies."  
  
Foaly sulked, but said, "Commander Root, I can find no other explanation for why everything went kaput. The Codex Crystal's awake."  
  
"Awake? Do you expect me to believe that it's been asleep with a little blanket and teddy bear?"  
  
Foaly rolled his eyes. "This is no time to be sarcastic, Commander. The reason the Codex Crystal was shipped out of Haven so long ago was because the People didn't trust it in the hands of their own kind. It was safe with the Mud Men, at least for a little while. Unfortunately, it seemed that a stray burst of fairy magic or something has come too close to the vicinity of Washington, D.C, and the Codex Crystal registered it and awoke. Procedure in the Lower Elements is to shut down and completely mask Haven, so that whoever has his hands on the Codex Crystal can't find us."  
  
Root growled, but he knew the centaur was right.  
  
"Unfortunately," Foaly said, staring at the console, "there's a bit of a flaw in that plan. Everything is shut down, and I mean everything."  
  
For once in his life, Root felt worried.  
  
"That - that wouldn't include LEP officers sent out on routine checks, would it?" he said.  
  
Foaly looked uncomfortable. "Well...." he hedged, gnawing nervously on his carrot for time, "normally, it doesn't, but I'm still re-assimilating our data and running checks to make sure everything is functional after the C Cube pinged us, so there might be a few flaws left in the system. In this case - well - "  
  
"If you hedge one more time, I'll have to trim you," Root snarled. "Is or is not Senior Captain Holly Short affected by the Codex Crystal and your crazy equipment?"  
  
"Well - uh - yes," Foaly stammered.  
  
If Root turned any darker red, he would most likely explode.  
  
"LISTEN, FOALY, YOU HAVE PRECISELY AN HOUR TO FIX THIS PROBLEM, YOU HEAR ME? ONE HOUR! IF THE PROBLEM ISN'T FIXED BY THEN AND YOU HAVEN'T MADE CONTACT WITH THE SENIOR CAPTAIN, YOU CAN KISS YOUR JOB GOODBYE!"  
  
Foaly huffed. "You wouldn't fire me, Julius, I'm your only techno-genius. Unless you want to use dwarves. So I won't take that serious- "  
  
"ONE HOUR! AND DON'T - CALL - ME - JULIUS!"  
  
Foaly sighed and walked over to the bank. He switched on emergency power and began typing madly on his various keyboards. Root watched him suspiciously, until at last the red lights on the communications panel turned green. He leapt across the room and seized the microphone, keying in Holly's code number.  
  
"Senior Captain Short, this is Haven. Senior Captain Short, you are being ordered to respond. This is a mandatory check. Please respond in the next ten seconds."  
  
More silence.  
  
"D'Arvit, Holly!" Root exploded. "Obey the LEP rules, for Haven's sake! Respond, or I'll see Grub Kelp promoted to your position!" He wished he could have thought of someone else. Holly would never believe that.  
  
"She's not answering," Root said after a minute, putting down the microphone. "I hope this doesn't mean what I think it does - "  
  
"Yes," Foaly said. "It does."  
  
The South of France  
  
Artemis Fowl did not understand why this hint of a remembered dream would suddenly encroach upon his brain. He didn't understand it, which meant that he didn't like it. He prided himself on knowing everything. He stared at the horizon with the computer in his lap, but the heat haze had vanished. Maybe it was just an illusion after all.  
  
His fingers strayed to the keys of the laptop again, but he couldn't quite bring himself to begin typing. There was just something he was forgetting here. For a moment, it felt to him as if a chunk of something had been carved free from his brain. Then the feeling passed, and he mentally shook himself. He was being stupid.  
  
Artemis Fowl Sr. waded in from the water and sat down. "What a lovely day, isn't it, Angeline, Arty?" he said dreamily, reclining beneath the silk umbrella and gazing at his wife and son.  
  
Artemis closed the laptop and stood. "Indeed, a fine day, Father. However, I think that one can only take so much sun and sand before one wearies of it. If you will excuse me, I think I will return to the hotel." He gathered his possessions off the sand and headed away before his parents could protest.  
  
He hurried across the hot sand and into the beachside spa/resort. He went up into his room, set the laptop on a table, then threw himself on the bed in a most un-Artemis-like move.  
  
Why couldn't he place it? Why was he so reckless, so full of manic energy? He needed to have something to do, and this was not the first time that the sensation of forgetting something important had occurred to him. Yet what would he be forgetting? He could remember his life clearly. Nothing missing there.  
  
And yet, with no crimes to carry out - yet - and no schemes of intrigue to embroil himself in, Artemis found that he simply had nothing to do. He wasn't cut out to be a civilian, he decided. Ordinary life did not agree with him.  
  
He opened his laptop and made the familiar search through his files and folders. A thousand times, he had combed this machine, trying to locate the source of his discomfort. A thousand times, he had found nothing, and his frustration had only increased.  
  
In another un-Artemis-like move, he switched on the room's television. It had been Artemis's experience that nothing useful was ever shown on television, only under-budgeted, sappy TV movies and useless pieces of news with entirely too perky reporters, but he found he needed a distraction.  
  
He frowned.  
  
Something very odd was happening to the television. Waves of static crackled across the picture, and the focus slid in and out, making the screen alternately blurry and in perfect clarity.  
  
However, the picture on the television was something that was very strange indeed. Nothing like the usual gunk. It showed a mossy inlet at the base of a cliff near the sea. Something small and crumpled lay in the foreground of the frame. Steam rose from the wrecked metal contraption on its back. It was wearing a purple jumpsuit of some sort, and a word was stitched across the left breast -  
  
- Artemis leaned closer, trying to make it out -  
  
- And the picture lost its focus, dissolving into a rush of static. With a muttered curse, Artemis watched as whatever the small thing was vanished. He waited until the picture at last crackled back into blurry view. Whatever it was looked uncannily human, but it was too short to be an adult and its face was too mature to belong to a child. Its eyes were closed, and its red hair rose in short spikes.  
  
Artemis stared at the child-thing. A strange feeling rose in his stomach. Whatever it - or she, he realized, was - he knew, somehow, that he had seen her before.  
  
Where?  
  
Artemis stared, transfixed, at the screen, but just as he started to speak, the picture fizzed and disappeared entirely. The screen went black. No matter how long he waited, it did not reappear.  
  
By the Sea, In France  
  
Holly opened her eyes. A groan passed her lips. She felt as if she had been beaten by five club-wielding security gnomes and then passed through the power generator for good measure. Either that or she'd had a troll dropped on her head, it didn't matter which. The point was that she was entirely sore.  
  
A humming near her ear started her upwards. It was the small video transmitter on her wrist, which sent out video feed to Foaly's computers back in Haven. The crash had knocked its setting to 'all channels.' As it was powered by batteries, the mass power failing hadn't affected it.  
  
All channels? Holly stared at it. That included Mud Men channels! The last thing she needed was for some Mud Man to switch on his television and see her, lying here, a total mess. She immediately turned the dial back to 'LEP Only,' took several deep breaths, then stood up.  
  
A wash of dizziness overtook her, and Holly staggered. She fell, and crouched on her hands and knees, trying to understand what would have made all of her equipment fail. That had never happened to her before outside of Haven; she'd been there when Artemis had pinged them. Was it possible that such a thing had happened again?  
  
Holly's stomach clenched. If she hadn't inspected Artemis just a few hours ago and certified him as completely unaware of the People, she would have immediately pointed to this as his fault. Yet it couldn't be, could it?  
  
Such questions made her head hurt, so she stopped trying to understand. She shucked the wrecks of the Hummingbirds off her back and dumped them in the sea; they were no use to her now. It was doubtful that any Mud Men would dive into the sea and find them.  
  
Holly gathered up the rest of her gear and put it in the black backpack that LEP officers were required to be equipped with. She hoisted it onto her back and moaned at the weight; she was in no shape to go anywhere, let alone fight. Rolling up the sleeves of her purple jumpsuit, she began moving cautiously toward the cliff. She had some fiber cord in a pocket; that wouldn't be affected. Perhaps she could set up a temporary transmitter to LEP headquarters on the cliff.  
  
It took Holly a long time to claw her battered way up the cliff. She felt as if her body had been taken apart and then knotted back together in all the wrong places; she supposed she should consider herself fortunate to have survived such a vicious crash. However, it had totally ruined her equipment, and, knowing Root, her reputation. She closed her eyes, already hearing him yelling.  
  
"LEP officers don't crash! What in Haven was that, Senior Captain?"  
  
Holly shook her head grimly and slumped onto the top of the cliff. Breathing heavily, she wished that she'd brought an oxygen tube such as the medi-fairies had. She still felt as if her lungs had been flattened by a stampeding troll.  
  
Normally it would be strictly against procedure to climb onto such a tall object and possibly risk exposure to the Mud Men, but every scrap of equipment she owned had gone out like a burned-out glow tube, and she figured Root would let it slip by if she managed to make contact with him.  
  
Holly worked quickly all the same though, opening the small, boxy transmitter at her wrist and fiddling with the wires. She attached a thin line of optic cord to it and hooked the end onto her Neutrino 2000 nuclear power source, which was the best she could think of. She did run a minor risk of looking like she'd been tied to the sun for several years if she exposed the power source, but she had no other choice.  
  
She depressed the communicator button. "Foaly, put down that carrot and listen to me. It's Senior Captain Short. Equipment failure, cause unknown. Repeat, equipment failure, cause unknown. If you can send over a shuttle, I can probably manage to make it to Nice shuttleport."  
  
No answer. There wasn't even a metallic buzz issuing from the box. It was dead silence.  
  
Holly quickly snapped the Neutrino shut and slid it into the holster at her waist. Quickly, before any Mud Men in airplanes got a glimpse of her and figured she was some crazy sky-diver - what did Mud Men find attractive about leaping out of an airplane thirty thousand feet in the air? - she unhooked a piton cord gun from her belt and fired the clip. It caught on the edge of the cliff.  
  
Holly gripped the cord in her gloved hands. It was a good thing she had them. The gloves, that is. Her hands were sweating like faucets.  
  
She quickly rappelled down the cliff and fired another trigger to release the clip. The cord came spinning back into her gun and she tucked it away in her backpack, then tried desperately to think of something to do.  
  
The rattle of a Mud Man car startled her. Immediately, she dashed into the underbrush and waited as the ridiculously eco-unhealthy contraption sputtered by, carrying several Mud Men of the breed known as 'college students.'  
  
When they had gone, Holly let out a long breath and tried to gather enough magic to shield.  
  
She couldn't. The crash had knocked it clean out of her.  
  
For a moment, Holly felt real fear welling in her. No magic, no equipment, no communication, no wings, and Mud Men nearby.  
  
She was one dead fairy. 


End file.
